Terry Jones: These Edmonton Oilers didn't learn a thing from December

This team showed up for Game 1 against the Calgary Flames and looked like the team most everybody figured they’d be. Then the mental flaws kicked in

In many ways, they’re the Weak-Kneed Wimps II.

When the 2017-18 Edmonton Oilers on the second day of 2018 effectively stuck the fork in themselves and booked the fat lady to sing, it wasn’t in a playoff series against the Los Angeles Kings. It wasn’t an unforgettable moment in hockey history that became known as the Miracle On Manchester.

While it was against the Kings, it was only four games after the Christmas break.

Those young Oilers of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Grant Fuhr, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson and Kevin Lowe spent that summer back in 1982 having to face the fact that they were a mentally flawed group that had some large lessons to learn.

They’d somehow come to the conclusion that they were God’s gift to the NHL but found out they were nothing but adolescent, front-running, good-time Charlies.

Is this team honestly that much different?

All off-season, this team had been told that they were about to embrace their future as the next great team in the game. The people who set betting lines had them booked into the Stanley Cup final.

This team showed up for Game 1 against the Calgary Flames and looked like the team most everybody figured they’d be. It was going to be a special season.

Then the mental flaws kicked in.

The Oilers decided they could throw their sticks on the ice and win. They were blind to the fact that despite the only thing they’d ever won was a single playoff series, they were going to face the same kind of treatment as the back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

With 20-year-old captain Connor McDavid — the winner of the Art Ross, Hart and Ted Lindsay trophies, the 103-points in the standings and 13 playoff games ending in a Game 7 loss in Anaheim — the Edmonton Oilers had become a trophy themselves.

Through November, this team would occasionally come together and win all the little battles and races to the puck and register a particularly impressive victory over a top team, and then follow up with a no-show stinker.

Finally, they made it to December where, playing on the edge of the cliff, they became the Oilers they were supposed to be.

Right through to Christmas, they showed the NHL that they could be the team everybody expected them to be. They won their final four games going into the holiday break. They’d won four straight games, seven of their past 10, and 10 of their previous 15. They’d set a goal of reaching .500 (17-17-2) by the break. They did it. Suddenly, the playoffs looked remarkably reachable. When they read their press clippings (guilt, again), they were told they were back.

But they’re the Weak-Kneed Wimps II.

They didn’t learn a damn thing.

They came back self-satisfied and blissfully ignorant that all their effort in December wasn’t the end game but just a chance to get back in the game.

And so here we are four losses later — with 18 goals against in those games and back-to-back 5-0 losses in must-win games — and this isn’t the summer of 1982.

They’re 17-20-3, and the computerized Sports Club Stats site rates their playoff chances at 1.1 per cent.

In the summer of 1982, the players could go hide. These guys have 42 games left to play, including Thursday’s final game of the four-game home stand prior to a five-game road trip and a six-day break.

And suddenly, it has to hit home.

The rest of this season, because of expectations, is going to feel longer than any of the seasons during the decade of darkness — the record equaling 10 straight seasons out of the playoffs.

And while, to some extent, the Blame Game has already been well under way, now it gets dialled up.

Fire the general manager! Fire the coach!

Those are the last things that should happen here.

This is, first and foremost, on the players.

You fire the GM and fire the coach, you give them the excuse that it wasn’t their fault.

Yes, Peter Chiarelli made a mess of this season as general manager. The guy who made all the right moves the previous two years made all the wrong ones this year.

And, yes, Todd McLellan and staff are currently coaching the worst penalty-kill unit in the entire history of the NHL and can’t tell you what’s wrong with it. Mostly, it’s Chiarelli providing the wrong people to play on it, perhaps. But to go a whole calendar year (other than the playoffs, when it was just fine) is on their head, too. Nobody gets into the playoffs with a penalty-killing unit that pathetic.

But Chiarelli is a good general manager. McLellan is a good coach. Everybody involved has had success before.

Don’t fire anybody. They’re in it together. Let them suffer through the rest of the season, figure everything out, and start all over again next year.

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